The winter of 2002/03 doesn’t seem to realize its time is up. Snow and ice storms scattered from the central Plains through the Midwest and Northeast resulted in gains ranging from about a nickel to 45 cents in non-Rockies/San Juan Basin markets Monday, although a couple of scattered points barely eked out any increase at all.

Meanwhile, Rockies and San Juan gas celebrated the restoration of a key outlet for nearly 900 MMcf/d, scheduled for Tuesday, by registering triple-digit advances.

The cash market also got some support from a screen uptick of nearly 20 cents. However, crude oil and heating oil futures were moderately softer as U.S. forces continued to probe Baghdad defenses, raising hopes of an early end to the war in Iraq, and some production lost during recent Nigerian violence reportedly was returning to the market.

It’s “April showers” that are supposed to bring May flowers, not “April snow,” one Northeast utility buyer complained jokingly. Major heating load in the region a week into April certainly wasn’t in the bidweek strategies of most traders, he said, noting that several citygates averaged in the $6.00s and $6.10s Monday, nearly half a dollar above first-of-month indexes.

The Northeast and parts of the Midwest are due to get a break from frozen precipitation Tuesday, but temperatures are expected to stay as much as 20 degrees below norms for this time of year, according to The Weather Channel. Little warmup is anticipated until near the end of the week. Electric utilities in both areas were working Monday to fix power outages affecting thousands of people.

It was a “very volatile market, particularly that run-up at the end,” commented a Midcontinent-based marketer. Many traders took short positions this month, “so seeing prices jump like they did today [Monday] has got to be a little unnerving. With this market, you never know when prices are going to come back down.”

The big story for many western traders was the scheduled Tuesday return of Transwestern’s San Juan Lateral from a five-day total outage. That restores 860 MMcf/d of outlet capacity that was sorely missed; Rockies prices were solidly below $2 late last week. A supply shortfall gave an extra boost to Rockies numbers, according to a marketer who said Williams Field Service’s Echo Springs Plant in Wyoming is down for scheduled maintenance through Friday, taking an estimated 100 MMcf/d off the market.

The huge rebound in the Rockies was wreaking havoc on regional spreads, the marketer continued. He reported buying a San Juan-Bondad package for around $3.80 and selling at Opal for nearly 40 cents higher. “You almost never see Opal over Bondad,” he said. It shouldn’t be long before Rockies prices are softening again, the marketer said. Although it was near freezing in much of the region Monday, temperatures will warm up quickly over the next two days, he said.

For one Southwest trader, there was “snow in New York, but nothing else exciting in this market.” Like several other sources, he noticed an upward trend in late prices, but was at a loss to explain why it was happening at Waha and in the Permian Basin. “The Permian numbers kept going up and I couldn’t figure out why.” Texas intrastate demand was fairly light, so not much gas was going east, he said, and he couldn’t detect any great load for it either in California or the Midcontinent. “Maybe some people had come into the month short and were having to bid up the Permian,” he speculated.

Citing last week’s generally warm weather, Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll estimates an injection of 35 Bcf in the Energy Information Administration’s storage report Thursday. This will compare with a 9 Bcf withdrawal last year (“the weather was much colder” then, Driscoll noted). Kyle Cooper of Citigroup (he moved on from Salomon Smith Barney) said his final estimation for the report ranges from unchanged to a build of 10 Bcf.

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